Who Gets What?: The Hardening of Class Inequality in the Late Twentieth Century

Do classes still exist? Is the notion of class still central to analysing inequalities in industrial society today? In this forceful study, Westergaard's answer to both questions is a firm `yes'. Written from an undogmatic Marxist perspective, the book claims that class analysis remains basic for the understanding of economic conditions and opportunities. The author argues against views - both neo-Marxist and more conventional - that class analysis should focus on questions of `who does what?' rather than `who gets what?' He also examines the reasons for the fall of corporatism and the rise of 'free market' ideas. This discussion is then connected to a critical consideration of the changing nature of welfare provision and its limits, from the 1940s to the 1990s. The final part of the book is an extended critique of once-again fashionable contentions that class division is a thing of the past. Class inequalities have in fact hardened; and though popular political reactions defy prophecy, they do not fit a vision of `classless' politics for the future.